Dick Teed, Windsor Baseball Legend, Dies At 88

STEVEN GOODE, sgoode@courant.com

WINDSOR — Dick Teed, a local baseball legend who once shared a dugout with Jackie Robinson when they were teammates with the Brooklyn Dodgers, died Sunday. He was 88.

In an interview last year just prior to the opening of the movie "42," which chronicled Robinson's early experiences as the first player to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball, Teed recalled being Robinson's teammate during the 1953 season.

"He was a very quiet guy. He would sit in the dugout and you wouldn't even know he was there," said Teed, a career minor league catcher who was called up to the big leagues for a month during that season.

Teed, who signed with the Dodgers in 1947 for $60 a month, struck out in his only major league plate appearance before being sent back to the minors.

He played for the Dodgers Triple A team in Montreal until he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, where he spent two more years as a minor league player-coach before making the switch to coaching and then to scouting. He scouted for the Phillies and then the Dodgers before retiring in 1994. In 2001, Teed was inducted into the National Baseball Scouts Hall of Fame.

Dick Lawlor, Teed's friend for more than 50 years and a fellow baseball scout for 20 of them, remembered Teed Wednesday.

"To me, he was some special person. He got more kids college scholarships," Lawlor said. "He was just one of those kinds of people. If you didn't like Dick Teed, you didn't like yourself or God."

Lawlor, 82, recalled how Teed, while a scout for the Phillies, changed his life in 1974. "He was on his way to Boston and asked me to go with him," Lawlor said. "Then he said, 'How would you like to work for me scouting?'"

Lawlor accepted the job offer and spent 34 years as a scout for the Phillies, retiring in 2009. In 2011, he was the team's first recipient of the Dallas Green Award, which was created to honor an amateur or professional scout for loyalty, work ethic and dedication.

At his 80th birthday party, which Teed attended, Lawlor said he made a point of thanking him.

"My life chaged because of Dick Teed," Lawlor said.

Windsor Mayor Donald Trinks said he remembered Teed, both from meeting him when Trinks was a youngster and then later when he was a business owner.

"I can remember him coming to the sixth-grade father-son night, talking about baseball in the earlier days. He was a great storyteller.

Teed was also a regular at Bart's Drive-In, which Trinks owns.

"He was a great, great gentleman who just loved baseball," Trinks said, adding that Teed's greatest strength was teaching children about the game.

"He was the ultimate teacher and always kept a passion for baseball," Trinks said.